Dozens of sexual allegations filed against Alberta teachers over past five years

Matt McClure, Calgary Herald05.17.2014

There have been 37 accusations of an inappropriate or sexual relationship with a student filed against Alberta teachers in the past five years. (PHOTO ILLUSTRATION)Stuart Gradon Stuart Gradon Stua
/ Calgary Herald

One February night two years ago, veteran teacher Brad Mastel did something that would cost him his career and might have landed him behind bars.

After 10 years in the classroom, Mastel took a 15-year-old student from his junior high school to a secluded park in Medicine Hat to watch a movie together on his mobile phone.

He testified later that he had only wanted to distract the distraught teen from her troubled home life, but police who knocked on the window of his idling truck that night said the girl looked like “a deer in the headlights” when she climbed out of the back seat.

In a statement to the officers, the girl said that “if the cops didn’t come,” she thought the teacher was going to “touch me in places or even have sex with me.”

Documents supplied by the Alberta Teachers Association show the complaint against Mastel is one of 37 accusations of an inappropriate or sexual relationship with a student filed against Alberta teachers in the past five years.

Of the 22 cases where sufficient evidence was found to warrant a hearing, 16 resulted in the teacher being banished from the classroom.

“You cross that line with students,” said Alberta Teachers Association executive secretary Gordon Thomas, “and we’re generally not giving out second chances.”

Four cases that were considered less grievous by the association resulted in either a reprimand or a fine or both.

For example, Jeffrey Webster had to pay $1,000 and received a letter of severe reprimand for text messages sent to a male student at Calgary’s Lord Beaverbrook High School in 2010 requesting specific sex acts in exchange for money.

Webster resigned from his post with the Calgary Board of Education the following spring after three years on the job.

Evidence at Mastel’s disciplinary hearing showed his relationship with the 15-year-old girl began the previous fall with the exchange of casual notes and inside jokes.

Later, there was a drive home alone from a sports tournament, and an evening walk during which the girl said Mastel hugged her and related stories from his childhood.

That night in the truck, she told police that Mastel again put his arm around her, placed his hand on her stomach and kissed her neck.

Police charged Mastel with sexual assault, sexual interference, sexual exploitation, sexual touching and unlawful confinement. At a 2013 trial, a judge acquitted him on all five counts.

But at a disciplinary hearing earliest this year, the ATA ruled Mastel had violated the trust relationship between teacher and student and damaged the reputation of the profession.

The panel declared him ineligible for membership and recommended the province cancel his teaching certificate, effectively barring him from the classroom for life.

“Taking an emotionally distraught student to to an isolated location, even with good intentions, demonstrates incredibly poor judgment,” the three-member panel ruled.

“Mastel developed an emotional, dependant and ultimately physical and sexually motivated relationship with (the girl), thereby failing to treat her with the dignity and respect owed to children.”

While the ATA has been responsible for teacher discipline at the province’s public and separate schools since the 1930s, a recent report on education issues delivered to Education Minister Jeff Johnson recommended the government take over policing the behaviour of Alberta’s 40,000-plus teachers.

“The system is not perceived to be open, transparent, timely or efficient,” concluded the report from the provincially appointed Task Force For Teaching Excellence.

“Concern was also expressed about perceived conflicts of interest in having the (ATA) investigate and adjudicate ... while defending its accused members.”

Thomas defended the ATA’s disciplinary process, saying it is similar to that used by other self-regulating professions such as lawyers, doctors and psychologists. Complaints are initially investigated by staff officers, but public members chosen by the provincial government help adjudicate cases that go to a hearing.

“This is an assault by the minister on teachers, and it’s political,” Thomas said.

The ATA has received 334 complaints about teacher conduct over the past five years, with 64 going to a hearing and another 33 still under investigation.

Thomas said the process is “open and transparent,” but the numbers also show 30 per cent of the cases deemed to have sufficient evidence of misconduct are resolved through mediation where details never become public.

For example, one-third of the 18 cases in which there was evidence of abuse were resolved informally.

“Those are situations where a teacher yelled at a kid and they wish they hadn’t,” Thomas said.

“They clearly crossed the line, but the misconduct wasn’t so far down the line as to require a hearing.”

While the ATA states it is unbiased in policing its members, an expert on teacher misconduct questioned whether the public sees it that way.

“The ATA is both a union and a professional body,” said Jerome Delaney, a professor at Memorial University. “They would appear to be in a bit of a conflict.”

He said Alberta might want to consider Ontario’s model where a separate college polices the profession.

While the ATA currently polices public and separate school teachers, the provincial government investigates complaints about misconduct at private and charter schools.

In a response to a Herald request, the education minister sent a letter this week indicating his department had convened five hearings during the past five years.

Johnson provided copies of some of the decisions — with names and school details redacted, despite the fact the hearings were public — that show two teachers were banished from the profession for inappropriate relationships with students after they were criminally convicted of sex-related charges.

In a third case, a teacher was reprimanded and ordered to take university courses on ethics and coaching elementary-age students after failing to treat a child with dignity and respect at a recreational sporting event.

Johnson said details on two other cases could not be provided because the hearings were either held in camera (privately) or the decision is still under appeal.

Among the complaints to the ATA that resulted in a hearing, nine involved pornography. Most involved use of board-supplied devices to look at inappropriate content or questionable postings in social media. In one case, a teacher at Crestomere School in Lacombe displayed vacation photos on her Facebook page that featured herself and her principal in a sexually suggestive pose, using the Washington Monument as a phallic symbol.

Parents and former students, who were online friends of Marti Ingram, saw the pictures and shared them widely in the central Alberta community.

Ingram was given a severe reprimand and fined $500 for failing to uphold the honour and dignity of the profession.

“Teachers have got a way too cavalier approach to technology these days, what can be posted, what can be tweeted,” Thomas said. “They are increasingly getting into trouble because there are sillier things said and even sillier things posted.”

Mastel was unavailable to be interviewed about the relationship with a student that cost him his job.

But Brad Volkman, deputy superintendent with the Prairie Rose School District where he taught, said banning Mastel for life was necessary to restore public confidence.

“In the wake of this incident, we had to reassure parents and students that our schools were safe,” Volkman said. “We want our teachers to be friendly with kids, but we remind them repeatedly that they can never be their friends.”

CASE STUDIES OF DISCIPLINED TEACHERS

Sex-related, inappropriate relationship:

Amanda Chilton received a severe reprimand, a $1,000 fine and lost her teaching certificate for six years this February for a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old student at Dr. Folkins Community School near Wainwright. “A couple of beers” at her apartment to celebrate his graduation, led to kissing and ultimately to intercourse on the couch.

Chilton was also found guilty of lying and trying to cover up what had happened, including a subsequent meeting with the student while the ATA was investigating to “get their story straight.”

During the clandestine encounter, they pair again had consensual sex.

Unprofessional conduct (filed by other):

Dino Pasquotti received a letter of reprimand last May for hosting parties in his Lethbridge home at which students from his Catholic Central High School were served alcohol. At a New Year’s Eve event in 2009, a 16-year-old female consumed enough to “pass out” and needed considerable assistance to get home safely.

Test fraud:

David Brian Schmitt was fined $2,000 and received a letter of severe reprimand in March for changing the answers on his Grade 6 students’ provincial achievement tests at Marwayne’s Jubilee School during four successive years.

Abuse, verbal or physical:

Principal Gerald Pedron was fined $1,000 and given a severe reprimand this year for locking a student who has behavioural issues into a room at Calgary’s Sundance Elementary School. The hearing also found Pedron deceived his staff by leading them to believe he had Calgary Board of Education support to confine the student.

Absent:

Carl Malenfant received a letter of reprimand in 2010 for skipping a professional development day for teachers at Red Deer’s Lindsay Thurber High School to attend a friend’s wedding in Las Vegas.

Financial misconduct:

Tracy Lyn Edwards was fined $1,000, received a letter of severe reprimand and lost her teaching certificate for a year this January for misappropriating money collected by students at Cremona School as part of a magazine sales fundraiser intended to support field trips.

Other (incompetence, privacy violation, rudeness)

Parents complained an unidentified teacher was unable to maintain discipline, was behind on paperwork, often absent and “rude, offensive and nasty.” An investigator found there was sufficient evidence to justify a hearing, but the case was resolved through private mediation.

Pornography:

David Wayne Cherrington received a letter of reprimand in 2012 for using an Edmonton Public Schools hard drive to store pornographic video clips and online chats with four, former students that was “overly casual and affectionate.”

Unprofessional conduct (filed by another teacher):

Rebecca Beagan received a severe reprimand last October for criticizing the abilities of a colleague at John Wilson Elementary School in Innisfail during verbal and e-mail communications with parents that were “petty, hostile, vitriolic and aggressive.”

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Dozens of sexual allegations filed against Alberta teachers over past five years

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